Bubulle's weblog

The challenge is now more and more to find good places to run without too much cars and noises....and not too far away.

Today, I think I made it well..:-)

After a look on the map, and some wild guess from what I now know of the way the city is organized, I decided to go south-west of Managa, from the hotel Seminole.

This is again a hilly run because, anyway, wherever you go south in Managua, you're going up.

Ralf, who arrived just yesterday, joined me and, I guess, enjoyed the run.

After going through an obviously quite rich neighbourhood with nice villas, gardeners, huge US truck-style cars, we went close to the Mormonschurch...and a mosque, then headed westward close to "Colegio Americano", with fences, walls, guards in the corner, etc. Seems that any tiny bit of USA in the world needs an army to protect it.

Crossing la Pista Suburbana, we then went on a very quiet roads towards the hill, in a very green and peaceful area. House there were really not as fancy as in other places, even seeming quite "poor" in some way. However, we never felt any problem and people we meet on the way are always friendly and smiling : "Hola", "Buenos Dias", etc.

At the end of the road, after about half an hour, we decided to head back. However, as going back the same way is boring, I suggested we head up west as my phone's map (it is very helpful to have a smartphone with GPS and Google Maps for wandering through unknwon places) was mentioning another road going north-west a little bit westward.

So we entered a small trail between house|farms...with dogs! These were a bit "scary" as they were barking at us and of course running entirely freely. On the other hand, none was really aggressive and we had no problem. I however saw a few people really staring at us as I guess there are not so many runners in this place..:-). But still, we never felt unsafe: just in a quite uncommon place.

After abotu 500m we found the "road" that was on my map: indeed a path going down slowly along the hill. And there was the marvel. An incredible panoramic view going going the volcanoes that are East and North of Leon : San Cristobal, Telica Rota, Pilas elHoj and last but definitely not least: EL MOMOTOMBO. A nearly perfect pyramid-style volcano that lies about 50km north-west of Managua, on the eastern shore of Managua Lake. The view there is...just fantastic with also a 180° panorama to West and North-West of the lake and the volcanoes area.

After this, all we had to do was heading back to the hotel and share this with you...:-)

As usual, the full GPS trace is here.